Petroneft Resources to recommence drilling operations in Russia

19th Aug 2014 11:42

Petroneft Resources, the Russia-focused oil and gas producer, has announced it will recommence drilling operations following the completion of the Licence 61 farm-out to Oil India in July.The company said in a statement that it has established a joint venture with Oil India and that budgets and major plans for 2014 and 2015 have also been finalised. Furthermore, the group announced it was now debt-free after repaying debts to Macquarie and Arawak."The initial meetings of the joint venture working group were extremely productive and we look forward to working closely with our new partner Oil India and to realising the full potential of this asset and to developing further opportunities together," said Dennis Francis, the group chief executive."We have a planned multi-well drilling programme. The initial well in the programme is the Tungolskoye number 5 well. We are also commencing a major seismic programme which will shape the future direction of our drilling activity."Drilling on well number five is set to begin next week, while a second team will soon be sent to well at Arbuzovskoye to recommence drilling operations, the company said.Further to that, a team has already been dispatched to begin operations for the acquisition of 1,000 km of high resolution 2D seismic in the first quarter of 2015.Petroneft shares were up 2.22% to 5.75p at 11:57 on Tuesday.DC